


Mother

by AeonDelirium



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:54:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonDelirium/pseuds/AeonDelirium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roose receives an unwelcome visitor with an unlikely request. She has her eyes on his most prized possession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> I've been holding on to this forever, simply because I couldn't get it to sound right. But here you are, I'm going to post it anyway. Someone previously asked for some interaction between Roose and Ramsay's mother, and I'd definitely love to do more with them, but for now this is all I got.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but there was no whimper in her voice, no whine, nothing but the peculiar flatness left by pain. “M'lord,” she said, plainly, then, turning to Bethany by his side, “m'lady”, and then nothing more. The look Roose gave her in return was dispassionate, but not entirely without approval. Hysteria was such an ugly trait in women.  
  
She had been quiet back then, too, he remembered as she stood before him now, the memories conjured by the colour of her lips that was still the same. It had been her lips that caught his eye, truly, an uneven raspberry-stain red from nervous biting. She had bitten them as she lay beneath him, quiet and stone-cold and bone-pale. He remembered the feel of her shoulder beneath his palm, the smoothness of her skin bared as he tore her dress. But she had been quiet. Quiet like his wife. His mouth twitched briefly in distaste.  
  
“Well?” he said.  
“I,” she said, bit her lip, shook her head, averted her eyes. “Perhaps I should not have come.”  
 _Yes,_ he thought, drawing a deep breath, _you should not have._ He was not in the mood for games.  
“Your son is dying,” she said, blurting it out like something left too long unsaid. Bethany tensed beside him; he saw her slender hands clench from the corner of his eye.  
Roose remained silent for a long moment, observing her. She did not falter beneath his glance. She did not fiddle with her dress nor look away nor blush. When he found no lie in her he paused, but found no remorse in himself either. He had always known the boy would die, sooner or later. He did not care to ask further questions. _Ill blood. That's all there is to it._  
“See my Maester,” he said finally, with an air of cruel generosity. “He will give you a draught to ease his passing.”  
She fell apart before his eyes, the expression crumbling from her face as though he had slapped her open-handed, and it roused a strange sort of feeling inside him, if only for a breath. He raised an eyebrow.  
  
“No,” she said softly, no air left inside her. He thought she was going to faint then. There was a memory of her face, pale and cold, eyes half-closed under heavy eyelids as she looked up at him, barely alive but with all the wrath of the world in her gaze. He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter.  
“He wants to see his brother.” There was a strange quality to her voice as she said the words, a hoarseness as from thirst or hunger, a longing. _Greed._ It passed like a shadow across her features, a slow, deep smouldering like burning embers, and he realised he had seen it there before. The day he had given her Reek. But it was gone before he could be certain.  
“ _Half_ -brother.” It was Bethany who spoke now, poised on the edge of her seat yet perfectly straight. It was the only word that passed her lips, but it had an edge to it like a blade. Roose mused briefly about women and the bloodless wars they waged in words and glances, but this was not the time and place. His eyes lingered on his lady wife for another moment.  
.”Half-brother indeed,” he said, turning his head once more. “I never so much as mentioned the boy to my son.” Then, before he could help it, he added, “There is no need to upset him over a bit of bastard blood.”   
It was worth the slip of countenance, almost, seeing her throat constrict as she struggled to swallow, and he marvelled at the ability of pain to lend a certain beauty even to the plainest features. Nonetheless, he had allowed his temper to get the best of him in a situation where such things were most unfitting, and it annoyed him.  
  
In the end, she regained her balance once more.  
“It's his dying wish m'lord, _Ramsay's_ dying wish. Don't you remember his name? And he has your eyes m'lord, his brother's eyes if what they say is true. Is it so much to –”  
“No.” A rare flush had spread over Bethany's pale cheeks and she trembled, nails digging into palms, brow furrowed, eyes alive with anger. _Alive._ A word that seldom came to mind looking at his wife, Roose thought. The sight might have been pleasant, in other circumstances.  
“My lord husband is right, there is no need to upset the boy.”  
The two women stared at each other, _mothers of my sons,_ Roose realised, similar in so many ways, and he could feel the miller's wife between his fingers, a mess of tangled hair, heard the highborn lady's voiceless gasp as he parted her flesh, and in that one fleeting moment he could almost grasp what he had seen in them, once. Before they had birthed his children.  
  
“Mother.” Roose barely had time to turn his head before Domeric was by Bethany's side, soft buckskin boots on stone and a kiss on his mother's cheek. There was a slight smile about his lips that faltered when his eyes met Roose's.   
“Forgive me, father. I could not help but overhear –”  
“It is all right, Domeric, you needn't trouble yourself.” Bethany had reached out for his hand, clasping it in both of her own, clinging to it like a drowning woman to a root by the riverside, and Roose had to look away to quell the growing anger inside his chest.   
  
He paused again when he looked at her. Looked at her looking at his son. His skin almost crawled then, and his hands wanted to ball into fists. His mouth became a thin line. _You cannot have him,_ he thought, or rather caught himself thinking, _he is mine._ His prize and pride. His heir.  
“Domeric,” he said, more softly than usual if it was at all possible. He had the boy's attention nonetheless, big, pale eyes lingering confusedly on the lines of his face, harsher now than they had been a moment ago.  
“Your lady mother is right, this is none of your concern. You will return to your chambers.” _She will not have you._  
He held his gaze for a moment, before Domeric's eyes darted over to her, and his face changed, smooth brow furrowed by a frown. Roose did not need to look to see her biting her lips, pink flesh growing pinker, wetter as she worked it with her teeth. The boy trembled, ever so slightly, and he wet his own lips with his tongue. Ill blood. _It runs in every man._  
  
“I will go,” Domeric said, still looking at her. His back straightened and he stepped forward. Bethany made a distressed sound as his hand slipped from hers. But when her eyes found the other woman's face the hatred of her gaze almost prompted Roose to speak. The boy hesitated, but only for a heartbeat.  
  
Her ugliness was striking, truly, now that he looked back at her. He could not help but wonder what he had ever seen in her thin, dry hair, blotchy skin, and even her lips, the lips his thumb had traced as he spent himself inside her, they repulsed him now, almost obscene in their plumpness, wet and worm-like. An unbecoming flush spread across her features when Domeric took her hand and kissed it. Kissed it with that same mouth that had touched his mother's cheek mere moments ago. Strange, how women turned to wives and wives into mothers, all by the touch of a man.  
“I wish there was more I could do for my brother,” the boy said softly, the empty space between the last two words audible. “I will see him right away, if it please you.”  
  
Roose stood. “It does not please me. You will remain here.”  
Domeric turned his head, his pale cheeks slightly coloured. He squared his shoulders. “A peaceful land,” he said, forming the words carefully, “a quiet people.”  
Bethany rose from her chair and lost her silent grace on the two steps down from the dais. She was a tall woman, but next to Domeric's youthful form she shrunk, nothing but a shivering shroud. “Please don't go,” she said, grasping his hand between hers once more, wanting to but too hesitant, too weak to pull him away from the other woman. She glared at her instead.  
“You can't take him.” Her voice was small, but wormwood bitter. “I'll sooner die than let my son go with you, I will not allow –”  
“ _Allow?_ ” Roose would have risen from his chair, had he not been standing already. Instead he sat back down again, and felt a sense of calm spread through him as he placed his hands on the armrests, fingertips caressing polished wood. This was where he belonged. It was for common men to stand and shout and rage. A lord sat. A lord watched. A lord directed.  
  
Their faces were all turned up at him, Bethany anxious, Domeric chagrined, and her … he did not linger long on her face. The sooner this woman left his halls, the better.   
“Domeric is heir to my lands and title, and a man grown.” His glance rested heavily on his wife, and even after all these years the look of sheer and utter hopeless defeat she gave him set his nerves tingling. His fingers pressed against the wood as he steadied himself in three heartbeats.   
“He is no swaddling babe for you to coddle and command.” Then, turning his eyes on Domeric, he said, “A lord must do what best befits his interest.”  
  
Domeric met his glance unafraid, refusing to look at his mother as she squeezed his hand one last time.  
“I will go,” he said once more. “I will grant my brother's wish.”  
The miller's wife gave a breathless sound of joy and, grabbing his other hand, squeezed a few tears from her eyes that rolled down her cheeks, polished glass disguised as diamonds. The boy however seemed smitten by her display, shaking off Bethany's grasp as he turned from his mother. He would return with his chest swollen with pride and his pockets empty and his head full of charming ideas of men and women that could not have been farther from the truth. But if he had at least a thimble's worth of wit in him he would make certain the boy was well and truly dead, and that would be the end of the cursed tale. It was a compromise. And that Roose could condone.  
  
“The Maester will give you a herb to end the boy's suffering, if need be,” he said, the words no longer intended as a jab. She nodded gravely.  
“Thank you, m'lord. The Gods bless you, m'lord. May they have mercy on his poor soul.” And with that and a strange stray sob, she placed a hand on Domeric's shoulder, gently. The boy smiled, catching Bethany's eye.  
  
“Do not look so grim, mother. You shall have me back before you know it.” She did not reply, but Roose saw the breath stuck in her throat. He knew he had to have her, tonight.  
  
Domeric did not turn his head again as they walked from the hall, her hand still on his shoulder. But she did, looking intently at Roose. She was older now, her face blotched and swollen and unshapely, but the emptiness in her eyes was still there. still the same after all these years, an emptiness he had put into her when he had hanged her beloved and fucked her beneath his corpse. An emptiness longing to be filled.  
 _Your son is dying._  
In all his Northern winters, Roose had never felt so cold.  
The door fell shut behind them.


End file.
